The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (41 page)

‘Yes, Lady Maelys?’ He came across.

‘Could you touch this and tell me if you feel anything? Be
careful though.’

He stroked the taphloid. ‘It’s beautiful. It feels nice.’

‘It’s a taphloid, and it’s always looked after me.’ She
guessed it only affected people with an ability for the Art. Vomix had said
that his aura had felt turned inside out, so what if …?

‘Can you do something important for me? Something no one
else can do?’

‘Yes, I can.’ He lifted his chin.

‘Could you give this to the bad man, Seneschal Vomix, and
tell him you found it?’

‘But I didn’t find it. You had it all the time.’

Maelys sighed. Timfy was too well brought up. ‘Close your
eyes and hold out your hand.’

He did so. She put the taphloid on his palm and closed his
fingers around it. His hand dropped a fraction under its weight.

‘Open your eyes.’

He opened his eyes, and then his fingers. ‘You just found
the taphloid in your hand, didn’t you, Timfy?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, Lady Maelys.’

‘So can you tell the bad man you found it?’

‘Yes, Lady Maelys.’ He trotted off around the curve of the
granite wall, proudly.

Maelys felt ill. If Vomix realised what the taphloid was
meant to do he would slay the lad out of hand, but what else could she do?

To her left, Jil was staring blearily at Maelys as if trying
to work out what she was up to. Suddenly the colour drained from her face.
‘Timfy!’ she called in a voice as weak and cracked as Maelys’s own. ‘Timfy,
come back! Maelys!’ she hissed, ‘I’ll never forgive you!’

‘It was the only way. Do you seriously think that monster
will let any of us live?’ Maelys said quietly. It wasn’t a defence, for she
didn’t have one, but she owed Jil an explanation.

An agonised cry rent the air; from
Vomix
. Maelys hurled her cut ropes away, stumbled to Jil and began
to saw at her bonds. Jil’s eyes flashed sparks, and as soon as her hands were
free she began punching, slapping and tearing at Maelys’s face with her nails,
then snatched the knife and stumbled around the corner.

Maelys went after her, head ringing. She rounded the bend
and stopped dead. Vomix was reeling about, holding Timfy’s hand which still
clutched the taphloid, and making a dreadful keening wail. The seneschal’s face
was so contorted, seemingly by his agony, that the skin had torn at cheek, left
ear and brow. Blood ran down in curtains, dripping off his jaw. He kept shaking
his swollen right hand as if trying to rid himself of the taphloid, but his
hand had locked so tightly around Timfy’s, and around the taphloid, that Vomix
couldn’t rid himself of it.

Her father must have set it up to conceal her small aura,
but passage through the Mistmurk had transformed it and now, when someone with
a different talent touched the taphloid, it reversed their aura agonisingly.
Vomix was swinging from side to side, stabbing the air blindly with his sword.
Maelys caught her breath – it would take only a single blow to slay the
boy. Jil was hopping from one foot to another, waving the knife but unable to
get close.

Maelys had to put things right; she had to stop Vomix even
if it meant attacking him with her bare hands. As she stumbled towards them,
Sergeant Tink came pounding along the cliff from the other direction, shouting,
but Vomix couldn’t take anything in save the deadly, tormenting device attached
to his hand. He managed to open one eye, raised the sword in his left hand to
plunge it into Timfy, and Maelys couldn’t get there in time.

She snatched up a broken stick, hurled it at him like a
spear and for once her aim was true. The jagged end caught him in the ribs, low
down. He staggered and his sword drooped.

Jil sprang forwards, hacking at Vomix with the knife. He
swiped the sword at her, knocking the knife out of her hand, but the sword
slipped from his bloody fingers. Jil, with a look of dreadful determination,
snatched it up, raised it high and hacked off Vomix’s right hand, the one
holding Timfy and the taphloid, above the wrist.

Vomix screamed thinly and reeled towards the cliff, running
at it as if intending to run up it vertically. He crashed to the ground, rose
with blood pouring from his mouth, nose and stump, and began to climb the
crevice the sergeant had gone up earlier. Screaming hysterically, Jil prised
the bloody hand off Timfy’s and flung it after Vomix. Phrune, who stood further
on, clapped his hands over his ears – shrill sounds appeared to cause him
pain. Jil threw her arms around Timfy, squeezing him tightly, then wrenched the
taphloid out of his fingers and hurled it at Maelys. The heavy little device
struck her on the forehead so hard that she blacked out momentarily.

She came to on the ground, seeing double. Jil was running
for the trees, her brother in her arms. In the distance, Phrune stepped out of
the shade and hurled a stiletto at the sergeant. The blade took him in the
right eye and he fell dead. Maelys was lying on the damp ground with her vision
going in and out of focus when she made out Vomix at the top of the cliff,
flailing madly with his truncated arm as if at an invisible enemy. He stepped
off the cliff, plummeted into a ravine and she lost sight of him.

Maelys couldn’t stand up, but if she didn’t hide, Phrune
would kill her too. Catching the taphloid by its chain, she dragged herself to
the base of the cliff, towards the undercut partly concealed by ferns. She was
wriggling backwards into the low space when Phrune appeared.

He bent, gingerly touched the fallen taphloid with a
knuckle, then jerked away as if he’d been stung. His eyeballs rotated in their
sockets and his mouth gaped. Maelys grabbed the chain and humped backwards but,
before she could get inside, Phrune put his boot on the taphloid. He crouched
down, took a rag from his pocket, folded it around the taphloid and tore the
chain out of her hand.

Maelys felt a physical wrench as the taphloid passed into
his keeping. She felt naked without it; exposed. Was her aura now visible to
Phrune? She had to get away and hide. She dug her boot toes into the base of
the crevice and pulled herself backwards a hand’s width, then another.

Phrune wrapped the device in several folds of cloth which he
bound on securely with cord and stowed the package in a pocket. Maelys was
really frightened now, for her head and shoulders were still exposed. He drew
another stiletto and reached out for her throat but his eyes revolved again and
Maelys snatched the knife.

She swiped it at him then humped backwards into the
undercut, which was no higher than a bookshelf. It was cool and wet. She
continued crawling backwards, holding the knife out in front of her. Phrune
went down on hands and knees, but he was still shaky. She slashed at his face;
he scrambled backwards out of sight.

Distantly, Monkshart gave a muffled cry. ‘Phrune, Phrune!’
Shortly she heard Phrune stumbling away.

Maelys had just enough presence of mind to pull the dangling
ferns back in place to cover the entrance, then laid her cheek in the mud and
closed her eyes.

 
THIRTY

After being tied up and having his coat bound over his
face, Nish found it hard to follow what was going on, apart from the moment
they crossed out of the maze into the real world. He recognised it instantly,
because of the sudden assault on senses that had been confused and deprived for
a day and a night. Not only the sounds of nature: water trickling down rock; a
bird calling in the distance, its trill ending in a whip crack; wind in the
tops of tall trees. But also the smell and feel of the real world: pungent
wafts of leaf oils that previously he’d only smelt in unguents from the
tropical north; a humidity that was all the more stifling because he couldn’t
loosen his clothes or uncover his face; the solidity of the ground beneath his
feet.

Even more striking, however, as he passed through the slight
resistance of the maze boundary into bright, burning sunshine, was the sudden
relief of the pressure of the maze which had been in his mind all the time.

The sergeant bound Nish and Monkshart to separate trees and
ordered them to remain silent. They had no choice, being gagged so tightly.
Nish was standing in the hot sun and soon tickling sweat was running down his
chest and back.

Before long the sergeant came back with a dipper of water.
He loosened Nish’s gag and allowed him to drink his fill, then restored the
gag. To his left, Monkshart was gulping down his portion. Some time later Nish
heard the sergeant and Vomix talking, and discovered that a squad of soldiers
would soon be here.

He fought down panic. He must be stoic about his fate, since
there was nothing he could do. His luck had run out. He closed his eyes, sagged
against the bonds and managed to doze.

In battle, Nish had heard men dying in every imaginable form
of violence, but the cry of agony that roused him was unlike anything he’d ever
encountered. It was an agony of the soul, as if the man’s very life essence was
being ripped out of him, twisted into its negation and forced back in. Shivers
rippled along Nish’s arms; would he be next?

The sergeant yelled, ‘Seneschal, what is it?’ but Vomix
didn’t answer. The screaming sank to a quavering moan.

A child cried out then Nish made out a woman’s hoarse voice.
‘Let him go, you brute. Let him go.’

The moaning was cut off by the thump of a sword blade
shearing through flesh and bone. Nish knew that sound too. Vomix screamed,
though this time it was just normal human pain. Nish heard running feet;
someone grunted, then a body thudded to the ground not far away.

He wrenched at his bonds, expecting to die. Nothing happened
for some minutes, then the ropes were cut and the coat lifted off his head. He
was dazzled by the brilliant sub-tropical light for a few seconds, then
Monkshart cut the gag and Nish looked around, blinking. A bloody-faced,
mutilated Phrune was heaving a stiletto out of the eye socket of the sergeant,
who lay in the ferns at the base of a granite cliff. There was no sign of Vomix.

‘I thought I heard a woman and a child.’ Nish rubbed his
sore mouth where the gag had cut into it.

‘Fled, and good riddance,’ said Phrune in a thick, oddly
flat voice, the sound issuing from his gashed nose as well as his mouth. He
wiped the blade fastidiously on the sergeant’s shirt and stowed it in a sheath
strapped to his left calf, under his trousers. ‘Come on. The troops will be
here any minute.’

‘What happened to Vomix?’ said Monkshart, giving Phrune a
shrewd glance.

‘He fell off the cliff, up there,’ said Phrune, pointing.

Monkshart’s gaze followed his finger. Nish’s did too. The
drop into the ravine was a good ten spans and almost certainly fatal, but
–

‘I’ll believe he’s dead when I see the body,’ Monkshart said
quietly, rubbing his raw arms. He pulled the sleeves of his coat down over his
hands, wincing. His corrugated face was criss-crossed with pain lines.

A horse whinnied distantly. ‘This way,’ said Phrune. ‘Quick!
And don’t leave any tracks.’

They followed him down into the forest, being careful to
leave no footmarks. Nish had an awful lot of unanswered questions but now
wasn’t the time to ask them.

An hour later, when they were well away into the
forest, Monkshart drew Phrune aside into a wall-like copse of trees, saying
over his shoulder, ‘Stay here, Deliverer, while Phrune attends my skin.’

Nish nodded and lay on the decaying leaf litter, staring up
at the sky. He was too weary to move. He heard muffled cries of pain from the
copse, but must have dozed, for the next he knew Monkshart was standing over
him, his cheeks gleaming with lotion, wearing a new set of tissue-leather
gloves and looking just like his old commanding self.

They spent the rest of the day creeping through a forest of
gigantic, widely-spaced trees festooned with vines and creepers, watching every
footstep. They walked upstream or down along the bed of every stream they came
to, and took extra care to leave no marks on the banks where they came out.
Finally, at sunset, Phrune announced that they’d lost their pursuers.

‘Vomix was scum,’ Monkshart said, ‘But he was also the
God-Emperor’s personal envoy, and Jal-Nish won’t give up until he finds him.’

‘It’ll take him days to get here,’ said Phrune, ‘and in the
meantime the soldiers won’t learn anything.’

‘Why not?’

‘I used a charm to hide what happened back there. Enough to
confuse minor mancers.’ Phrune drew the zealot away and spoke quietly in his
ear, watching Nish the whole time. Monkshart didn’t look pleased. ‘Very well,’
he said at the end. ‘I must know what she saw down below but there’s nothing we
can do to find out now. But they’ll find the servant girl and the child.’

‘I cast a temporary glamour at them too, so they’d get away,
undetected.’

‘That was uncommonly big of you, Phrune. I wonder why you
didn’t just slit their throats.’

‘A generous impulse, surr, since they’d saved our lives.’
Phrune smiled mockingly at his lie. ‘The girl had Vomix’s sword and wasn’t
afraid to use it, and he was still at large. By the time he went over the
cliff, she’d bolted with the brat and there wasn’t time to run them down.’

‘No matter. Her tale will help spread the news about the
Deliverer,’ said Monkshart. ‘It’s time to put the plan in motion.’

He didn’t look like a man who’d walked a day and a night
without sleep, nor suffered such bouts of confusion in the maze. He was burning
with zeal again, and Nish felt uneasy about it.

‘What plan is that, Monkshart? I’m in charge, remember?’

‘Of course, Deliverer,’ said Monkshart blandly. ‘And the
first part of the plan is to find a safe refuge, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Where do you have in mind?’